1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to distributed multimedia access systems and methods, and more particularly to a social-based distributed multimedia access system and method for P2P multimedia sharing.
2. Description of Related Art
With the advancement of network technology, multimedia sharing in networks has become more and more popular. Multimedia files such as mp3 files, personal films and photos can be accessed from multimedia sharing sites such as Youtube. More and more users are attracted to see films on multimedia sharing sites, which also offers the multimedia sharing sites great opportunities of advertisement. Accordingly, more and more software and network companies enter into the multimedia sharing field.
A P2P network is one of the most popular distributed networks that makes multimedia sharing efficient. Users can query and download special type of multimedia contents according to their preference through P2P networks. However, most of the P2P networks establish overlay networks according to physical network constraints without taking into account of users' preference and network topology is established through distributed hash tables and ID of sharing contents and has no relation with users' preference. As a result, a user must know ID of a media file before he searches through the network. However, users generally only know part of the media content. For example, users that want to download a music file may only know singer of the music or time he heard the music or only know some lyrics instead of ID of the music. Thus, P2P networks must provide a keyword search service such that users can find multimedia files partially corresponding to the keywords.
In addition, in practical social network, people having same preference usually form a social group and share their experience. Similarly, in P2P networks, some users have preference to a special type of multimedia files, which affects their search and download method. Currently, most sharing systems of P2P networks are constructed only according to physical network constraints without taking into account of users' preference. In such circumstances, a user needs to query large number of users to find files of interest, thereby resulting in high search cost and increasing waiting time. Therefore, sharing systems of P2P networks based on social networks are designed. In detail, one objective of the social network based P2P networks is to establish topology having a social relationship as shown in FIG. 1. However, the relationship is now established based on two persons' preferences instead of friendship. If two persons have same type of preference, a tie is established between them. Thus, network nodes having same preference are connected through short path, which make interchange of multimedia more efficient. That is, when a network node searches a preferred object, the node can find the object from neighboring network nodes with great possibility. As shown in FIG. 2, a social relationship based on preference similarity is shown.
However, it is not easy to realize efficient sharing of the multimedia files through the social network based distributed system. It depends on two factors: the first is how to define users' preference and similarity between users; and the second is adjustment of the distributed system. A system can concentrate (collect) all users' information and assess similarity between any two persons so as to establish best overlay structures. But concentrated system cannot afford large number of users and cannot efficiently process change of users' preference and network. Therefore, there is a need to increase sharing efficiency of the above-described social network based system such that each user can quickly find files of interest on the network according to its preference.